Bunyan, Defoe, and the Novel | Peter J. Leithart | First Things Bunyan, Defoe, and the Novel by Peter J. Leithart 11 . 5 . 05 I want to examine Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Daniel Defoe in the context of the rise of the Western European novel. Some scholars suggest that novel-like writing is evident in the ancient world, in medieval Japan, and medieval Europe. But the novel-writing that began to take over Europe in the 17th century was historically unique, and has become the chief genre of fiction writing in the modern world. A novel is a long prose work in which the main characters and events are not real characters and events, a long prose fiction. This definition sets the novel off from earlier long works of literature, which were in the main written in verse rather than prose. Milton is the last to write a major poetic epic, and even in his day it was something of a quixotic endeavor. This definition, obviously, also sets the novel off from history and biography.

Though there are various forms of the novel that blur this distinction, such as the historical novel, and even many works that would not be considered historical novels assume a real historical background and include references to real historical events and characters. Yet, even the most historical of historical novels take liberties with character and events, and are not offered as an accurate description of the facts. We should be more surprised by the dominance of the novel in modern literature than we are. Even if we can say that something like novels existed in the ancient world or in the east, the dominant forms of literature were poetic rather than prose. The shift from epic poetry to the novel is one of the key marks of the shift from ancient and medieval to modern literature. Shakespeare, though not writing epic, is still writing poetry, as are many of the major English writers until the 18th century. It seems to me that it reveals something quite profound about the character of the modern age. What it reveals is pretty hard to determine, but it is remarkable to realize that the novel as we know it began to rise in the seventeenth century, and has since drive every other genre from the field. Nothing today rivals the novel in its popularity or number of publications or visibility.

No poet today has anything close to the popularity of a John Grisham, nor even of a more serious novelist like John Updike. There is a lot of poetry written today, perhaps more than ever before, but it does not have the same cultural position that poetry had in the past. I want to look briefly at the origin of the English novel, and highlight some of the important early developments. In particular, I want to explore some of the technological, social, cultural and religious circumstances surrounding the rise of the English novel. I do not claim that these changes and developments were “causes” for the rise of the novel. But it is a simple historical fact that the English “novel” as a form of writing appeared in the early modern period, and it appears that the novel “fits” with other developments. First are technological changes, especially in the media of communication. In particular, the early modern period witnessed a shift from a largely oral to a largely written culture. When Samuel Pepys wanted to know the latest news, he hung out at Court, spent time at Westminster, or had a drink at a nearby tavern.

But over the course of the later 17th and early 18th centuries, news and gossip increasingly came through the written word. The invention of movable type and the easy production of books had shifted the setting for literary performance. Movable type preceded the rise of the novel by well over a century, but it provides crucial background. At the most obvious level, movable type made books more widely available and cheaper. The exploitation of the printing press did not really take hold until the middle of the 17th century: “Only in the great upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s did printed materials — pamphlets, ballads, handbills, and the like — begin to reach anything approaching a large audience in London.” Printing revived again in other periods of crisis, such as that around 1688, but it’s not until the 1690s that we see a real accelerated growth in the production of printed materials, including magazines and newspapers. Along with this was an increase in literacy, which created a wider reading public. Readers were no longer confined to the elites, or to the clergy. More and more, the common man was becoming a reader.

There is evidence that the rise in literacy was especially marked among women. Peter Laslett (in “The World We Have Lost”) notes that after the Marriage Act of 1753, each bride and groom were required to sign or make a mark in the marriage register. A survey of Yorkshire parishes showed that 2/3 of the grooms could write their names in the 1750s, but less than half the brides. A hundred years later, the proportion of bridegrooms who could sign their names had risen to 75%. In another area of England, no woman signed the marriage register (at Crulai) prior to the 1680s, but after 1740 there was a rapid rise to over half. Laslett suggests that this was mainly due to the opening of a school for girls in the village around this time.ii) Book ownership has been measured. It is almost impossible to determine book ownership prior to the mid-17th century, and even after, wills provide the best evidence. But there seem to be too few to account for the size of the book industry.

Laslett notes: “in Leicestershire in the 1620s-1640s, 17 per cent of all willmakers left books, and 50 per cent of the gentry. That even modest craftsmen could and did own serious and difficult works has recently been demonstrated in the area of Glasgow in Scotland in the 1750s, where farmers, showmakers, and even coalhewers, but especially textile workers and above all weavers, are now known to have paid good money in order to buy, and presumably to read serious works of theology.” With a book-buying public that now included weavers and textile workers, rather than scholars, there was pressure to write to popular tastes. The tastes at times run in the area of theology, and devotional literature like Bunyan. But popular tastes also ran in the direction of sensational romances. Most especially, a reading public like that of the late 17th and early 18th century were not inclined to favor poetry, which is more difficult to read. Bunyan’s popularity is not surprising; but it would be surprising if the masses flocked to get copies of Spenser or Milton.

This change in the form of literary works affected the way literary works were written. The wider distribution and the new medium of the disposable book had important effects on the way literature was read. Not only were there important changes in the distribution and readership of books; there was a change in the context for literary “performance.” Perhaps more accurately, the change was a matter of moving from literary performance to reading. Literature was no longer a public act (as it was for epic poets of the ancient world, for instance) but a private and impersonal communication. Elizabeth Eisenstein, who has written some books on the cultural impact of the printing press, linked the change from oral to printed medium with secularization, individualization, and atomism of modern society: “in all regions . . . the pulpit was ultimately displaced by the periodical press, and the dictum ‘nothing sacred’ came to characterize the journalist’s career. Pitted against ‘the furious itch of novelty’ and the ‘general thirst after news,’ efforts by Catholic moralists and Protestant evangelicals, even Sunday schools and other Sabbatarian measures proved of little avail . . . .

By the last century, gossiping churchgoers could often learn about local affairs by scanning columns of newsprint in silence at home.” Eisenstein also suggested that the dominance of written literature weakened community ties: “To hear an address delivered, people have to come together; to read a printed report encourages individuals to draw apart . . . The wide distribution of identical bits of information provided an impersonal link between people who were unknown to each other”; “To be sure, bookshops, coffeehouses, reading rooms provided new kings of communal gathering places. Yet subscription lists and corresponding societies represented relatively impersonal group formations, while the reception of printed messages in any place still required temporary isolation — just as it does in a library now. The notion that society may be regarded as a bundle of discrete unites or that the individual is prior to the social group seems to be more compatible with a reading public than a hearing one” This privatization of reading and literary experience also favored the novel over the poem. Poetry is essentially an oral art. The poet is as concerned about the music of his words as he is about the sense (though the two are not entirely separable).

With the widespread distribution of books, the reading public is more dispersed, individualized, private; literary experience is reading in an easy chair rather than attending a theatrical performance or a public reading. These are not exclusive, but the particular experience that is associated with the novel is a private one. Another factor was early capitalism. Trade in books was becoming big business, because of the ease of printing and the rising literacy rates. William Warner writes that “the market in printed books offered a site for the production and consumption of a very broad spectrum of entertainment . . . . Novels were the first ‘disposable’ books, written in anticipation of their own obsolescence and in acceptance of their own transient function as a part of a culture and serial entertainements . . . .novels appear to have been the most high-profile, fashionable, and fastmoving segment of the market.” Critics noted the parallels between the novel and the market: “both breed imitation, gratify desire, and are oblivious to their moral effects.” Given this expanding market for novels, imitation was widespread, and any successful novel was followed by spinoffs by other writers (and also often by parodies). There were also reasons why the English novel took the distinctive form it did.

In part, this was due to philosophical developments that filtered into culture. The rise of Cartesian rationalism made the emotions problematic. Philosophy was the preserve of reason, and the development of a mechanistic, Newtonian science reinforced this separation by associating scientific enquiry with dispassionate philosophical investigation. Emotions and particularity were left to literary expression. Romanticism in poetry and sentimentality in novels are both reactions to rationalism and the rise of scientism. Stephen Toulmin observes that the novel, despite its emphasis on sentiment, is the obverse side of rationalism: “Descartes exalted a capacity for formal rationality and logical calculation as the supremely ‘mental’ thing in human nature, at the expense of emotional experience, which is a regrettable by-product of our bodily natures. From Wordsworth to Goethe on, romantic poets and novelists tilted the other way: human life that is ruled by calculative reason alone is scarcely worth living, and nobility attaches to a readiness to surrender to the experience of deep emotions.

This is not a position that TRANSCENDS 17th-century dualism: rather, it accepts dualism, but voes for the opposite side of every dichotomy.” This is close to what Eliot called the “dissociation of sensibility,” the separation of reason and emotion, that Eliot believed occurred in the early modern period. Puritanism was a significant factor in the rise of the English Novel in particular. Edward Said claimed that the novel is a specifically Christian form of writing. It presupposes a world that is incomplete, that is yearning for salvation, and moving toward it. By contrast, he claims, the world of Islam is a closed and complete world, and therefore the novel form, with its dynamism and movement, cannot arise there, until touched by Western literature. Whatever the truth of this general claim, it is a simple fact that some of the earliest “novellike” works in English were produced by Christians, specifically by Puritans. Here I get finally to the contributions of Bunyan and Defoe.

Pilgrim’s Progress is, as someone has remarked, an allegory that is constantly attempting to burst into a novel, and Robinson Crusoe is a novel that continually threatens to collapse into allegory. I want to explore these two writers, their similarities and differences, and the way they both contributed to the development of the English novel’s particular concerns and emphases. In a standard account of the development of English literature, these books and these two writers are seen to be quite different in outlook and intention. Bunyan was a Puritan writing an edifying allegory, while Defoe was writing an adventure story, which many have described as the “first novel.” I want to suggest instead that they are much more similar than we usually recognize, and their common concerns are an important part of the background for the rise of the novel. By employing an allegorical method, Bunyan in one sense followed a long-standing tradition of Western and English letters, going back at least to William Langland and the morality plays of the medieval period, and reaching its climax in Spenser’s Fairie Queene. But even the slightest acquaintance with Spenser and Bunyan shows that Bunyan’s allegory was far different form Spenser’s.

Spenser’s plots are exceedingly complex, and there are always several layers of allegory operating simultaneously (personal development of virtue, political allegory, English history, England’s religious struggles, etc.). Bunyan is much more straightforward; each character is transparently named and means basically one thing. One of the differences has to do with the impression of “realism” and naturalism that we get from the characters. Although his characters are allegorical figures, they have a roundness that Spenser’s lack. We come away thinking we know Mr. Worldly Wiseman, when it’s hard to say we have gotten to know the Redcrosse Knight or Sir Guyon. If Bunyan’s methods of writing were different from the methods of earlier allegorists, they seem equally different from the methods of a “realistic” writer like Defoe. Again, even a passing acquaintance with the two books makes this clear. A portion of Defoe’s book is written as a journal of Robinson’s daily activities on the island. The entry for Nov.

18 reads in part: “The next day in searching the woods I found a tree of that wood, or like it, which in the Brasils they call the iron tree, for its exceeding hardness; of this, with great labor and almost spoiling my axe, I cut a piece, and brought it home too with difficulty enough, for it was exceedingly heavy.” If this symbolizes something, it is certainly not clear what. It appears to be simply a realistic description of what a man stranded on a desert island might do for a day. Christian the Pilgrim, however, cannot make a move without doing something allegorical. Christian too has some dealings with a tree, following his battle with Apollyon. But this is the “tree of life,” and the leaves of that tree heal Christian of his wounds. He then sits to eat and drink and continues his journey, but certainly that eating and drinking is not “realism” but another allegorical note. Following the battle with the monstrous opponent, it is necessary for the Christian to take refreshment. Perhaps the clearest illustration of the overt differences between the two books has to do with the primacy and overtness of theology.

If Bunyan doesn’t permit Christian to act non-allegorically, he also does not allow him a single frivolous or purely “secular” conversation. Robinson Crusoe doesn’t talk much to anyone, but his discourse and thoughts are filled not only with thoughts of Providence and his sin, but with the practical needs of the moment. Yet, I want to suggest that the two books are far more similar than they might appear to be, and that there is a rather small (though momentous) step from Bunyan to Defoe. And I also want to suggest that Defoe is the far better theologian of the two. One similarity becomes evident when we recognize the extent to which Defoe employs biblical categories and allusions to describe Robinson’s life and history. Early in the novel, Robinson is a Prodigal Son who sins by despising parental and other authority; a Jonah who refuses to go where the Lord wants him to go and ends up drenched in the sea. Defoe bleeds bibline nearly as much as Bunyan pricked. There is also Defoe’s obvious concern with the spiritual condition of his character.

Robinson is a rebel early in the novel, and his obstinence is directed not only as his father but also at his Father. He ignored the Providential signs that should lead him along a different path of life. When he gets on the island, his attitude to Providence begins to change, and instead of bucking against Providence he begins to show gratitude for all that the Lord has brought to him. At the climax of this development, Crusoe converts in the midst of a deathly illness. Crusoe has, in short, his own wicket gate. Bunyan is obviously presenting a morphology of conversion; but Defoe is doing the same, though the adventure context distracts many readers into thinking otherwise. Behind both Bunyan and Defoe is a tradition of Puritan (but not only Puritan) spiritual autobiography, and this tradition has, through these two writers, an incalculable effect on the development of the English novel. A number of the features of these autobiographies (some of which were published, others of which were circulated in manuscript) are evident in the two novels. (I am dependent here on the fine 1965 study by G.A.

Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography.) The Puritans defended their interest in taking account of their spiritual progress (or decline) in several ways. On the one hand, they often used economic metaphors, comparing the Christian to a spiritual merchant who should take stock of his accounts every day to see if he is making a profit. They also recognized that each human being, though unique, faced similar challenges and temptations to all other human beings (temptations, Paul said, are “common to man”), and so an account of one sinner’s progress in holiness would be edifying to others. This attention to personal development and progress has an important, often secular, manifestation in the novel’s emphasis and interest in character development. Stories of character development are stories of sanctification (or, desanctification as the case may be). Though not making the theological dimension explicit, a Jane Austen heroine struggles to discern the shape and progress of her life as much as a Puritan journal-writer. Puritans were instinctive allegorists (or, perhaps better, tropologists), turning all created things, all human activities, and every event into some sort of moral allegory.

One minister was celebrated by his biographer for his ability to see a message in everything: “each Tree, and Bird, and Stone, would be a Text whereon he would aptly inlarge; having a mighty wit for the Spiritualizing of every thing, and gathering occasion of good Converse in every Company, and upon every matter.” A 1682 volume by Benjamin Keach and Thomas Delaune, aptly entitled Tropologia, attempted to explain biblical metaphors and to spiritualize all of life. In this respect, Robinson Crusoe is actually closer to the Puritan outlook than Bunyan. Puritan spiritualization moved from a “natural” phenomenon to a spiritual lesson, which is the spiritual and intellectual move that Robinson Crusoe has to learn to make  to see meaning in the works of Providence. In Pilgrim’s Progress, however, there simply is no natural world upon which to tropologize. Defoe’s more robust attention to and love of this world is one of the important clues to his theological difference from Bunyan. The plot structure of both Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe also owes a great deal to the symbolics of Puritan autobiography.

The notion that the Christian life is a journey is an ancient one, but the Puritans were also inclined to see the Christian life as a voyage. As Starr puts it, “The Christian must pilot his soul with the alertness of a mariner: just as frequent soundings, diligently recorded, enable ships to avoid rocks and quicksands, so constant vigilance and reflection keep one clear of spiritual perils. A kindred analogy was used to illustrate autobiography’s double instructiveness to author and reader. A ship’s log is useful to him who keeps it and to others, should the voyage ever be repeated. Since every man is embarked on essentially the same spiritual journey, the record of one will be of use to all.” In short, it is no accident that Defoe’s book actually becomes a dated journal for some dozens of pages. He is imitating a well-known genre, though again the allegorical and spiritual dimensions are less overt than in spiritual autobiography.

Starr argues that, though Defoe drew on many sorts of sources for his book, Robinson Crusoe and Defoe’s other novels “are as strongly influenced by a long tradition of spiritual autobiography.” Autobiography and the self-scrutiny required to produce it, reinforce and reflect the individualistic strain inherent in Puritanism. Both Crusoe and Bunyan reflect this same tendency. Bunyan’s Christian leaves his family behind to go it alone. He occasionally meets up with allies along the way, and these “two gathered” are the most “ecclesial” that Bunyan gets. (Part II of Pilgrim’s Progress has a more corporate character, with a traveling band of pilgrims rather than a solitary one.) Crusoe’s conversion is a very Protestant conversion  sola Scriptura, without mediator, priest, or sacrament. In part, this individualistic strain arises from a sense of the danger of the external and social world. The world is “Vanity Fair,” where everything has its price, and the way of salvation is the way of exodus from the city of destruction. Bunyan’s heroes are all lower-middle-class, and anyone with a waistcoat or a hint of frill is suspect from the outset.

By its nature, Defoe’s book is less overt in its social critique than Bunyan is, because Crusoe never encounters society. But the hints that we get suggest that Defoe is less suspicious of civilized society than Bunyan. Though often read as a primitivist, it is clear that Defoe placed his hero on his island with all sorts of benefits derived from the civilization from which he is cut off. He recovers what he can from the ruins of the civilization, and begins to rebuild middle class English society on his island  fulfilling his father’s instructions in spite of himself. The course of Crusoe’s post-conversion life also illustrates Defoe’s more favorable attitude toward creation. After Crusoe’s conversion, he leaves his underground home (he’s been living in a cave, a grave), moves across the island to an Edenic setting and builds a tree house, above the ground. He begins to domesticate animals. He is, in short, converted to be a new Adam, not to escape civilization but to rebuild it on a more pure foundation.

By the 18th century, the story of conversion and sanctification has become a story of character development; the concern for Providence has become a secular concern for the meaning of events and objects in the world; and the social critique that is often near the heart of the English novel has lost its theological moorings. Yet, in certain fundamental respects the English novel is a secularization of Puritan autobiography, mediated through the allegory of Bunyan and the adventure-allegory of Defoe. English Literature: History of Literature Search: Kindly click with Mouse Loading Be a Member of this BLOG Dec 30, 2011 History of Literature The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry which attempt to provide entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction to the reader/hearer/observer, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pieces. Not all writings constitute literature. Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data (e.g., a check register) are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined in the first sentence above. Early Literature Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous.

The very first writings from ancient Sumer by any reasonable definition do not constitute literature—the same is true of some of the early Egyptian hieroglyphics or the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese regimes. Scholars always have and always will disagree concerning when the earliest records-keeping in writing becomes more like “literature” than anything else: the definition is largely subjective. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that, given the significance of distance as a cultural isolator in earlier centuries, the historical development of literature did not occur at an even pace across the world. The problems of creating a uniform global history of literature are compounded by the fact that many texts have been lost over the millennia, either deliberately, by accident, or by the total disappearance of the originating culture. Much has been written, for example, about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE, and the innumerable key texts which are believed to have been lost forever to the flames. The deliberate suppression of texts (and often their authors) by organisations of either a spiritual or a temporal nature further shrouds the subject. Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a qualifying role as literature’s first stirrings.

Very early examples are Epic of Gilgamesh, in its Sumerian version predating 2000 BCE, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead written down in the Papyrus of Ani in approximately 250 BCE but probably dates from about the 18th century BCE. Ancient Egyptian literature was not included in early studies of the history of literature because the writings of Ancient Egypt were not translated into European languages until the 19th century when the Rosetta stone was deciphered. Many texts handed down by oral tradition over several centuries before they were fixed in written form are difficult or impossible to date. The core of the Rigveda may date to the mid 2nd millennium BCE. The Pentateuch is traditionally dated to the 15th century, although modern scholarship estimates its oldest part to date to the 10th century BCE at the earliest. Homer‘s The Iliad and The Odyssey date to the 8th century BCE and mark the beginning of Classical Antiquity. They also stand in an oral tradition that stretches back to the late Bronze Age.

Indian śruti texts post-dating the Rigveda (such as the Yajurveda, the Atharvaveda and the Brahmanas), as well as the Hebrew Tanakh and the a mystical collection of poems attributed to Lao Tze, the Tao te Ching, date to the Iron Age, but their dating is difficult and controversial. The great Hindu epics were also transmitted orally, likely predating the Maurya period. Other oral traditions were fixed in writing much later, such as the Elder Edda, written down in the 12th or 13th century. There are various different possible answers to the question “Which was the first novel ever written?” (See Candidates for the first novel). Early Indian literature Indian literature, Kannada literature, Sanskrit literature, and Tamil literature Indian epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata, have influenced countless other works, including Balinese Kecak and other performances such as shadow puppetry (wayang), and many European influenced works. Pali literature has an important position in the rise of Buddhism.

Early Chinese literature or Chinese literature The first great author on military tactics and strategy was Sun Tzu, whose The Art of War remains on the shelves of many modern military officers (and its advice has been applied to the corporate world as well). Philosophy developed far differently in China than in Greece—rather than presenting extended dialogues, the Analects of Confucius and Lao Zi‘s Tao Te Ching presented sayings and proverbs more directly and didactically. Classical Antiquity The Greeks Ancient Greek society placed considerable emphasis upon literature. Many authors consider the western literary tradition to have begun with the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which remain giants in the literary canon for their skillful and vivid depictions of war and peace, honor and disgrace, love and hatred. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, lyric poetry as a genre. A playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting. In doing so, he essentially invented “drama”: his Oresteia trilogy of plays is seen as his crowning achievement. Other refiners of playwriting were Sophocles and Euripides.

Sophocles is credited with skillfully developing irony as a literary technique, most famously in his play Oedipus the King. Euripedes, conversely, used plays to challenge societal norms and mores—a hallmark of much of Western literature for the next 2,300 years and beyond—and his works such as Medea, The Bacchae and The Trojan Women are still notable for their ability to challenge our perceptions of propriety, gender, and war. Aristophanes, a comic playwright, defines and shapes the idea of comedy almost as Aeschylus had shaped tragedy as an art form—Aristophanes’ most famous plays include the Lysistrata and The Frogs. Philosophy entered literature in the dialogues of Plato, who converted the give and take of Socratic questioning into written form. Aristotle, Plato’s student, wrote dozens of works on many scientific disciplines, but his greatest contribution to literature was likely his Poetics, which lays out his understanding of drama, and thereby establishes the first criteria for literary criticism. The Romans: Latin literature In many respects, the writers of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire chose to avoid innovation in favor of imitating the great Greek authors.

Virgil‘s Aeneid, in many respects, emulated Homer’s Iliad; Plautus, a comic playwright, followed in the footsteps of Aristophanes; Tacitus‘ Annals and Germania follow essentially the same historical approaches that Thucydides devised (the Christian historian Eusebius does also, although far more influenced by his religion than either Tacitus or Thucydides had been by Greek and Roman polytheism); Ovid and his Metamorphoses explore the same Greek myths again in new ways. It can be argued, and has been, that the Roman authors, far from being mindless copycats, improved on the genres already established by their Greek predecessors. For example Ovid’s Metamorphoses creates a form which is a clear predecessor of the stream of consciousness genre. What is undeniable is that the Romans, in comparison with the Greeks, innovate relatively few literary styles of their own. Satire is one of the few Roman additions to literature—Horace was the first to use satire extensively as a tool for argument, and Juvenal made it into a weapon.

The New Testament is an unusual collection of texts–Paul‘s epistles are the first collection of personal letters to be treated as literature, the Gospels arguably present the first realistic biographies in Western literature, and John‘s Book of Revelation, though not the first of its kind, essentially defines apocalypse as a literary genre. Augustine of Hippo and his The City of God do for religious literature essentially what Plato had done for philosophy, but Augustine’s approach was far less conversational and more didactive. His Confessions is perhaps the first true autobiography, and certainly it gives rise to the genre of confessional literature which is now more popular than ever. The Medieval Period: Medieval literature: Europe After the fall of Rome (in roughly 476), many of the literary approaches and styles invented by the Greeks and Romans fell out of favor in Europe. In the millennium or so that intervened between Rome’s fall and the Florentine Renaissance, medieval literature focused more and more on faith and faith-related matters, in part because the works written by the Greeks had not been preserved in Europe, and therefore there were few models of classical literature to learn from and move beyond. What little there was became changed and distorted, with new forms beginning to develop from the distortions.

Some of these distorted beginnings of new styles can be seen in the literature generally described as Matter of Rome, Matter of France and Matter of Britain. Following Rome’s fall, Islam‘s spread across Asia and Africa brought with it a desire to preserve and build upon the work of the Greeks, especially in literature. Although much had been lost to the ravages of time (and to catastrophe, as in the burning of the Library of Alexandria), many Greek works remained extant: they were preserved and copied carefully by Muslim scribes. In Europe Hagiographies, or “lives of the saints“, are frequent among early medieval texts. The writings of Bede—Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum—and others continue the faith-based historical tradition begun by Eusebius in the early 300s. Playwriting essentially ceased, except for the mystery plays and the passion plays that focused heavily on conveying Christian belief to the common people. Around 400 AD the Prudenti Psychomachia began the tradition of allegorical tales. Poetry flourished, however, in the hands of the troubadours, whose courtly romances and chanson de geste amused and entertained the upper classes who were their patrons.

Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote works which he claimed were histories of Britain. These were highly fanciful and included stories of Merlin the magician and King Arthur. Epic poetry continued to develop with the addition of the mythologies of Northern Europe: Beowulf and the Norse sagas have much in common with Homer and Virgil’s approaches to war and honor, while poems such as Dante‘s Divine Comedy and Geoffrey Chaucer‘s The Canterbury Tales take much different stylistic directions. In November 1095 – Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. The crusades would affect everything in Europe and the Middle East for many years to come and literature would, along with everything else, be transformed by the wars between these two cultures. For instance the image of the knight would take on a different significance. Also the Islamic emphasis on scientific investigation and the presevation of the Greek philosophical writings would eventually affect European literature. Between Augustine and The Bible, religious authors had numerous aspects of Christianity that needed further explication and interpretation.

Thomas Aquinas, more than any other single person, was able to turn theology into a kind of science, in part because he was heavily influenced by Aristotle, whose works were returning to Europe in the 1200s. Early Islamic literature: Arabic literature Among the innovations of Arabic literature was Ibn Khaldun‘s perspective on chronicling past events—by fully rejecting supernatural explanations, Khaldun essentially invented the scientific or sociological approach to history. Persian literature: Pahlavi literature and Persian literature From Persian culture the book which would, eventually, become the most famous in the west is the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The Rubáiyát is a collection of poems by the Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám (1048-1122). “Rubaiyat” means “quatrains”: verses of four lines. Turkic literature: Turkish literature Between the 9th and 11th centuries, there arose among the nomadic Turkic peoples of Central Asia/Turkistan a tradition of oral epics, such as the Book of Dede Korkut or the Manas epic.

Among the early written prose Yusuf Has Hajib‘s Kutat-Ku Bilik (Blessings and Wisdom), the Divan-i Lugat-it Turk an encyclopedic dictionary written by Mahmut Kasgari and Mir Ali Shir Nava’i are early epic masterpieces. Later Chinese literature: Li Po Chanting a Poem, by Liang K’ai: (13th century) Chinese literature Lyric poetry advanced far more in China than in Europe prior to 1000, as multiple new forms developed in the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties: perhaps the greatest poets of this era in Chinese literature were Li Bai and Du Fu. Printing began in Tang Dynasty China. A copy of the Diamond Sutra, a key Buddhist text, found sealed in a cave in China in the early 20th century, is the oldest known dated printed book, with a printed date of 868. The method used was block printing. The scientist, statesman, and general Shen Kuo (1031-1095 AD) was the author of the groundbreaking Dream Pool Essays (1088), a large book of scientific literature that included the oldest description of the magnetized compass.

During the Song Dynasty, there was also the enormous historical work of the Zizhi Tongjian, compiled into 294 volumes of 3 million written Chinese characters by the year 1084 AD. Some authors feel that China originated the novel form with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (in the 14th century), although others feel that this epic is distinct from the novel in key ways. The true vernacular novel was developed in China during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD). European Renaissance Literature European Renaissance Literature and 15th century in literature Had nothing occurred to change literature in the 1400s but the Renaissance, the break with medieval approaches would have been clear enough. The 1400s, however, also brought Johann Gutenberg and his invention of the printing press, an innovation (for Europe, at least) that would change literature forever. Texts were no longer precious and expensive to produce—they could be cheaply and rapidly put into the marketplace. Literacy went from the prized possession of the select few to a much broader section of the population (though by no means universal).

As a result, much about literature in Europe was radically altered in the two centuries following Gutenberg’s unveiling of the printing press in 1455. William Caxton was the first English printer and published English language texts including Le Morte d’Arthur (a collection of oral tales of the Arthurian Knights which is a forerunner of the novel) and Geoffrey Chaucer‘s Canterbury Tales. These are an indication of future directions in literature. With the arrival of the printing press a process begins in which folk yarns and legends are collected within a frame story and then mass published. In the Renaissance, the focus on learning for learning’s sake causes an outpouring of literature. Petrarch popularized the sonnet as a poetic form; Giovanni Boccaccio‘s Decameron made romance acceptable in prose as well as poetry; François Rabelais rejuvenates satire with Gargantua and Pantagruel; Michel de Montaigne single-handedly invented the essay and used it to catalog his life and ideas.

Perhaps the most controversial and important work of the time period was a treatise printed in Nuremberg, entitled De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium: in it, the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus removed the Earth from its privileged position in the universe, which had far-reaching effects, not only in science, but in literature and its approach to humanity, hierarchy, and truth. The early modern period in Western Europe 16th century in literature and 17th century in literature A new spirit of science and investigation in Europe was part of a general upheaval in human understanding which began with the discovery of the New world in 1492 and continues through the subsequent centuries, even up to the present day. The form of writing now commonplace across the world—the novel—originated from the early modern period and grew in popularity in the next century. Before the modern novel became established as a form there first had to be a transitional stage when “novelty” began to appear in the style of the epic poem. Plays for entertainment (as opposed to religious enlightenment) returned to Europe’s stages in the early modern period.

William Shakespeare is the most notable of the early modern playwrights, but numerous others made important contributions, including Christopher Marlowe, Molière, and Ben Jonson. From the 16th to the 18th century Commedia dell’arte performers improvised in the streets of Italy and France. Some Commedia dell’arte plays were written down. Both the written plays and the improvisation were influential upon literature of the time, particularly upon the work of Molière. Shakespeare, and his associate Robert Armin, drew upon the arts of jesters and strolling players in creating new style comedies. All the parts, even the female ones, were played by men (en travesti) but that would change, first in France and then in England too, by the end of the 17th century. The epic Elizabethan poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser was published, in its first part, in 1590 and then in completed form in 1597. The Fairie Queen marks the transitional period in which “novelty” begins to enter in to the narrative in the sense of overturning and playing with the flow of events.

Theatrical forms known in Spenser’s time such as The Masque and the Mummers’ Play are incorporated into the poem in ways which twist tradition and turn it to political propaganda in the service of Queen Elizabeth I. The earliest work considered an opera in the sense the work is usually understood dates from around 1597. It is Dafne, (now lost) written by Jacopo Peri for an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the “Camerata“. Miguel de Cervantes‘s Don Quixote de la Mancha has been called “the first novel” by many literary scholars (or the first of the modern European novels). It was published in two parts. The first part was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. It might be viewed as a parody of Le Morte d’Arthur (and other examples of the chivalric romance), in which case the novel form would be the direct result of poking fun at a collection of heroic folk legends. This is fully in keeping with the spirit of the age of enlightenment which began from about this time and delighted in giving a satirical twist to the stories and ideas of the past.

It’s worth noting that this trend toward satirising previous writings was only made possible by the printing press. Without the invention of mass produced copies of a book it would not be possible to assume the reader will have seen the earlier work and will thus understand the references within the text. The new style in English poetry during the 17th century was that of the metaphysical movement. The metaphysical poets were John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, Henry Vaughan and others. Metaphysical poetry is characterised by a spirit of intellectual investigation of the spiritual, rather than the mystical reverence of many earlier English poems. The metaphysical poets were clearly trying to understand the world around them and the spirit behind it, instead of accepting dogma on the basis of faith. In the middle of the century the king of England was overthrown and a republic declared. In the new regime (which lasted from 1649 to 1653) the arts suffered. In England and the rest of the British Isles Oliver Cromwell‘s rule temporarily banned all theatre, festivals, jesters, mummers plays and frivolities. The ban was lifted when the monarchy was restored with Charles II.

Thomas Killigrew and the Drury Lane theatre were favorites of King Charles. In contrast to the metaphysical poets was John Milton‘s Paradise Lost, an epic religious poem in blank verse. Milton had been Oliver Cromwell’s chief propagandist and suffered when the Restoration came. Paradise Lost is one of the highest developments of the epic form in poetry immediately preceding the era of the modern prose novel. An allegorical novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come was published by John Bunyan in 1678. Other early novelists include Daniel Defoe (born 1660) and Jonathan Swift (born 1667). European literature of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period, of which Eliza Haywood‘s 1724 Fantomina is probably the best known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel.

18th Century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism. See also:

Question: Which 17th century allegorical novel is subtitled 'From This World To That Which Is To Come'?
Answer: 'THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'